Sorry Seems to Be the Easiest Word

Published: Dec 05 , 2013
Author: Alan Smith

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has promised to compensate
those left "out of pocket" after customers were unable to pay for
purchases.

RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank customers making online and card
payments were affected between 18:30 and 21:30 GMT this Monday.
Bearing in mind that Monday was supposed to be the biggest on-line
shopping day of the year (credit cards screaming with pre-Christmas
purchases), this was indeed a big cock up. There were stories of
students stranded in taxis they could not pay for, drinkers and
diners with unpaid bills and mothers unable to buy nappies filling
the morning news.

RBS has since reported that all systems are now back to normal.
Mind you, that is what they said in March the last time it
happened.

That said I think that the spokeswomen for RBS handled herself
extremely well on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme when put under
pressure by an enthusiastic reporter.

"We are deeply sorry for the inconvenience," said Susan Allen,
RBS director of customer relations. She added that one person being
inconvenienced was a disaster for a bank that prides itself on high
customer service.

A group spokesman added: "If anyone has been left out of pocket
as a result of these systems problems, we will put it right."

In many ways RBS handled the potential grievances to come with
aplomb.

They had clearly listened hard to the complaints and understood
the problems that the failure had caused individual customers. They
were incredibly sympathetic to the difficulties they had created
and promised to put right any reasonable requests for compensation.
Susan Allen refused to be drawn into a big argument about the whys
and wherefores and she refused to discuss the blame game, simply
saying that they would resolve the problem and do their absolute
best to ensure that it never happens again.

Hard to get cross with someone who handles the complaint so
well.

On so many occasions, this is not the case. A friend of mine has
a restraining order preventing him from being within 100 yards of a
certain electrical retailer following a massive argument over a
computer that didn’t work.

They argued; he lost his temper. The Police got involved; no one
won.

For RBS, the issue will be how they react to the out-of-pocket
discussions they will now have with their inconvenienced
customers. It may be that saying sorry will not be enough;
they may need to negotiate their way through a financial
minefield!

TAGS

Anjana – a sales leader with an IT firm – is busy preparing for negotiations with a large bank on renewing her firm’s contract with them. Given it is a decent sized deal, Anjana has been preparing for these negotiations over the last several days by interlocking with the account delivery teams, getting buy-ins from the senior leadership & CFO on commercials, getting a handle on the likely strategies from the competition etc. It is no surprise, given the rigour of her preparation, that Anjana was feeling confident about her meeting with the Client CIO.